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In my state the law is that such devices must be used "hands-free" so it's OK to have it mounted on the dashboard and displaying a map, but not held in your hand. I'm not sure if it's clear whether operating a touch interface is considered "hands-free" but considering almost every new car has a touch screen it would seem so.

All that aside these laws don't seem to be enforced. I see drivers using phones in their hands every day even though it's supposedly illegal.

Yeah, my state has a similar law. The broad rule is that you can't have any wireless device in your hand or supported by any part of your body while driving, whether you're using it or not. (Except for earpieces and wrist devices, which are still subject to rules against texting and driving.)

I think we can blame the court for this one. "Using" means using. It's not specific, but the court reinterpreted it to be more specific for some reason. It's essentially impossible to write a statute to defend against this since you can't depend on any particular word to be load bearing.

Even if you use comprehensive forward-looking language, the court can choose to strike any part they don't like under the guise that the current situation didn't exist at the time of the drafting.

The law could've been written like "While operating a motor vehicle, it is unlawful to use a smartphone, tablet, or other hand-held device, regardless of the activity being performed on the device."

I agree the law should attempt to be specific, but I have to point out that this is still quite ambiguous!

Is it permissible to dictate/listen to text messages on my handheld smartphone, so long as I don't hold it in my hand? Can I click "next track" on the steering wheel, but not on my phone screen?

What about smart watches? They are not handheld, but they are equally distracting, if not more so than a phone because their screens are so tiny and fiddly.

That doesn't seem like a good change. I can't use voice control to navigate?

Ok, I'll fix that.

"While operating a motor vehicle, it is unlawful to use a smartphone, tablet, or other hand-held device in a manner that requires physically touching the device, regardless of the activity being performed on the device."

That's not the rule. Per the article: Mounted phones, and drivers operating them with a single swipe, are exempted, according to the decision

California courts do whatever they want. Did you know that CA banned affirmative action by statewide referendum? And gay marriage? CA is the least democratic state in the country, by a wide margin.

California voters later enshrined the right to gay marriage into the state constitution by a statewide referendum that won by larger margin than the earlier anti-gay marriage referendum won by.

This seems like the complete opposite of legislators doing that.

The part you're quoting is about a previous version of the law, but you left out the money part:

> That interpretation, according to the court’s written decision, was because the state law at the time stated phones had to be used in a way that allowed for “hands-free listening and talking.”

> In 2016, the law was amended, with legislators pointing out that cellphones now acted more as “pocket-sized computers” and the law was too narrow.

So using it for maps doesn't prevent hands-free listening and talking. The law was outdated, if anything because the law was too specific about "listening and talking", not too vague.

It was from 2008. From some googling, it seems there was also a text message-specific update from 2009 or so.

And now the courts are saying "yes, when they updated that law in 2016 in the smartphone era about using a non-mounted phone, they meant 'using' generally, as opposed to the prior laws just about talking and texting."

There's also debate elsewhere about the "mounted vs unmounted" thing and whether or not that's a "loophole." But IMO that's intentional and reasonable because preventing using a mounted phone for navigation but allowing using a built-in-touch-screen would be completely absurd, and "mounting so you can glance and it and hit it with one hand" seems like a reasonable-enough line to draw for now.

I think we are agreeing here. We can guess that the original law's intent was that mobile phones were not to be used for any purpose while driving, with a specific narrow carve-out for "hands-free listening and talking." But, instead of saying that, it was written both too narrowly and too vaguely and had to be expanded and clarified later.

I also agree that the next fight is going to be about mounted vs. unmounted, and the distinction between a driver's phone attached to the vehicle vs. what we are starting to see in cars now, which looks and functions exactly like a tablet rigidly attached to the vehicle, except the tablet itself is made by the car manufacturer. If one is not legal to use by taking your eyes off the road to tap and swipe, then the other one should not be legal either!

Honestly, I wish we could just legislatively get touch screens out of cars in general. The roads would be safer overall.

> Legislators seem to love to do this. They deliberately write these laws using vague terms like "using" and then expect people (and the courts) to read their minds later on.

I don’t think it’s as intentional as you think. Writing rules to cover every situation ahead of time is extremely hard.

Even writing simple rules for something like an Internet forum or Discord has proven time and time again to be more difficult than anyone predicts. People will find loopholes in everything and real world situations will expose edge cases you never would have been able to predict.

Agreed. I remember thinking, at the time it was enacted, that it would solve the problem of people holding their phones and being distracted. Nope. Hopefully this gives the CHP (and other orgs) the mandate to give tickets.

Is it unrealistic to include something like an "abstract/summary/intent" with the law? Something like

> This law is intended to make it illegal for the driver of a motor vehicle to use a mobile device in a way that it is distracting to the goal of driving safely. One one end, holding it in one hand up to their head while talking to someone, or playing a visual game on it, would be distracting and negatively impact their ability to drive. On the other end, having it mounted on their dashboard and using it as a source of GPS would be considered reasonable. While it's true that any level of "use" of a mobile device can prove to have some level of distraction, the goal of the law is to allow such uses where it's clear the benefit of the use (to driving or health) outweighs the negatives.

^ The intent there is to demonstrate the idea of "a summary of intent", not to put forth what the summary should be. Don't sweat the details of my wording.

I wonder if using CarPlay to listen to music from your phone counts as "using"?

How about issuing voice commands, which I would argue is only slightly better, as your attention is still split and possibly much more of your immediate focus.

We solved the problem by building the cell phone into the car.